Weirdness Tag. . . .

I was tagged by Rennie with a the "weirdness tag" and I figured why not follow along. I have two other blog entries in the works and figured they can wait. I'm sure you all are just dying to find out my quirky weird issues - NOT. However, you will be very entertained by reading this I'm sure. Here are my 7 random and or weird facts about me.

1. I have a childhood habit of judging a book not just by what it looks like but how it feels. There has to be sufficient margins (not crammed too close to the edge). The font can’t be too small. Vertical spacing of lines is important too. It doesn’t have to be double spaced (that would be annoying too) but at least not crammed so close that the y’s and j’s have breathing room between the t’s and h’s below it! Long chapters kill me (but Harry Potter helped me make progress on this – still not over it completely). Paperbacks take a real backseat to hardcover, although size and shape of paperback can make a difference. Best feature of a book are pages with frayed edges, paper with high cotton content and old pages that feel really soft on the edges. If the edges are not right flat (like cut by a machine) but slightly askew that is cool!

2. If I’m helping with a dinner or lunch for a crowd and someone else set the table with knives pointing the wrong direction, I have to find a way to carefully change every knife to the proper direction while no one is noticing. (see Emily Post)

3. There is no use wasting time on chocolate unless it’s amazingly creamy and high quality. Forget the Hershey’s kisses they taste like wax! Bring on the European goodness or if one must settle for easier access, Dove will definitely do.

4. I refuse to pay more than $2 for a box of cereal. Less is even better. If it’s not on sale, it will not be invited to our table.

5. The 2” wood blinds drive me crazy if they aren’t positioned just right when open. They must NOT be turned even slightly down allowing the sunlight to flood the floor. The light has to either come directly in or reflect upward. Probably why I like indirect lighting so much.

6. Restaurant menus MUST be designed well. This could be a carryover from #1. I have a hard enough time making my selection. It is compounded when the menu is not well designed. I once had a menu overload experience where the menu was crammed in with almost no margins. The fonts changed from red and green for no obvious reason. I was so confused from trying to figure out why it was designed the way it was that I honestly could not pull my brain together to make a choice. It was like someone shot me with stupidity serum. What I ended up with was not that great either. I was in Maine and I had a lobster dish of some kind – how can that not be good? I still blame it on the menu!

7. So very closely related to #6 is the painful experience of having to read something with “font overload”. It makes me crazy. You know what I’m talking about, a document that has 10 different font selections and sizes; all for no reason other than the person creating the document just has no clue about readability.

So speaking of all this, I'm also terribly annoyed that the color of my blog links keeps changing to a weird purple and dark blue - which does not exist in ANY of my settings. It only displays that way in October as well. If I view previous months its fine. SO if you are noticing strange colors - please forgive - its NOT me!!! Maybe its just my browser? Also now having read my issues with font changes, spacing etc. you will not be surprised to hear me say that this blogging editor leaves MUCH to be desired. I'm not computer illiterate and I find it a pain and it loves to not do what I tell it to with font selection. You will see it changed the font on me and no matter what I do it just makes it worse. OH well.

I tag whoever would like to participate. Just follow the instructions in the rules image above.

"DEER ANGEL"

The more I researched and tried to come up with a solution to remove the poor dear across from the house the more I learned some interesting facts. See below. I also realized that even if I was willing to go touch the thing to move it into the ditch I would likely not be strong enough to drag it. Nick is in no position to help as he is having some major back issues at the moment. So what to do. . . Saturday we took a little trip to an apple orchard (despite the very cool, wet and windy day). I will share more on that little excursion in a different post. We were gone for maybe 5 hrs. When we left the deer was still sleeping peacefully across the street. Upon our return I looked, and looked and triple looked. It was GONE! I looked in the ditch all along the area and NO DEER! I’m so happy for whoever the DEER ANGEL was that came and removed it. Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! That made my day!

So here are some interesting tidbits (or I thought they were) I have learned over this past week.

Last year (2007), there were 61,907 reported car-deer crashes in Michigan, up from 60,875 reported the previous year. However, as many as half of all car-deer crashes may not be reported, so actual numbers may be much higher. Last year, 11 motorists lost their lives in car crashes, while another 1,614 persons were injured. In 2006, 12 motorists were killed and 1,676 were injured in similar crashes.

Just for the sake of comparison, in Utah between 1996 – 2001 there were a total of 13,020 deer related collisions.

According to State Farm's claim statistics, we have lived in two of the top three states with the most deer crashes. In order they are: (taken from information between June 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006)

1. Pennsylvania
2. Michigan
3. Illinois

80 percent of all car-deer crashes occur on two-lane roads between dusk and dawn. Actually I knew this one. You do train yourself to look well ahead and for those glowing deer eyes reflecting off the headlights, especially if you are out at these times. One of the crossroads nearest us is Deerfield. There is a reason it is named this!

Michigan has a 1.75 million-strong deer herd. The population of residents is well over 10 million. So we still outnumber the deer but that is an amazing number.

About 1.5 million deer-vehicle collisions happen each year in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those accidents cause about 150 deaths and $1.1 billion in property damage annually, according to NHTSA (who by the way Nick interviewed with at the same time he interviewed for his current position).

So 1.1 Billion a year! SO here is the question of the day. How many hungry people could be fed from all the deer that are hit? Not that I would want to eat it (although some deer meat isn’t too bad) nor do I think it would be realistic to retrieve all of them without other costs. But thinking of the current economic conditions it just makes me think. I did learn that the neighboring county accepts and appears to help pick up deer (within a 50 mile radius) as long as they are gutted first. They have an agency who then processes the meat, packages it for the freezer and is stored to give to families needing help from the food pantry. I actually called and talked with them. They said that they receive a lot of protein that is not perishable such as peanut butter or beans. So the deer donations have been greatly appreciated as they were able to give meat to many families who "rarely have any".

OH DEER!

I must preface this blog entry by saying I still think Michigan is a great place to live. There is lots of wildlife and I have become immune to MOST of the road kill that you see on a very regular basis both big and small. It is when the road kill becomes too close to my personal space that it bothers me. I did not enjoy the possum that landed in our driveway last year. For those of you with weak stomachs you might not want to read further. I don’t remember what we did with the possum (actually I can’t say WE because there is no way I would have touched the thing – even with a shovel). However, the possum tail was severed and that remained on our driveway for a really long time. Our driveway is not some nicely paved or cemented surface but mostly dirt and gravel. The gravel varies in quality and size along the drive but that is a completely different story. So the tail kind of blended in with everything else until I would go out to get the mail. YUCK! There was a day when this wouldn’t have bothered me either.

So the latest road kill is just too much for me. The very peaceful, not so alive deer you see in this picture makes me kind of sad. In fact it’s almost too disturbing to me. The deer is actually across the street. The property across the street from us is lined with wild growing vegetation, an overgrown ditch filled with our neighbors leaves and then beyond that the ground is farmed. We have been told it is owned by the University but I do not know for sure. So this deer is not really on our property but every time I pull in or out of our driveway I see it lying there so peacefully. Every time I look out the front bedroom windows I see it lying there. It’s not a bloody mess. It looks like it stretched out for a nap and never woke up – although I am positive this is not what happened. So I have heard comments that since there are so many deer in this state, if you hit it, it’s yours to do with as you wish. I guess getting free deer meat in exchange for your car repair bill is a small benefit. I have had deer meat several times but I’m just not a huge meat eater to begin with so I have no desire to do anything productive with it. The deer was obviously not desired by whoever hit it either. Looking at it just makes me think of having to put Sadie to sleep a few months ago. I know HUGE size difference but one of Sadie’s owners when she was a pup called her Clarisse because she looked like Rudolph’s girl friend. I now see the resemblance!

The scene is killing me and I don’t want to spend the next several months watching the decay process, too up close and personal! Nor do I want to see other things begin to use it for dinner, like the hawks that flew off it when I pulled into the driveway after taking the kids to school. So I put off calling the county Sheriff's office for a day because I was afraid they would laugh at me. I had to find out for myself if it’s really true that there is no provision for picking up a dead animal. Unfortunately it’s true. They do a spring pick up and that is it. OK so I don’t need my taxes to go up so they do more pickups but I did not like the choices that were given. They said I could drag it to the ditch (which is full with leaves), bury it or get someone else do to this. HEAVY SIGH!! Anyone want a dead deer? Anyone want to drag this to the ditch and cover it with the neighbor’s leaves? I am having a deer dilemma!

Completely Random

Monday while at the Doctors office for one of the kiddos, we noticed the crayons to draw on the exam table tissue paper. I have often thought this was a great idea for whoever thought of it. We were drawing pictures of the United States and talking about in what state everyone in the family was born. Our family of 4 represents CA, UT, IL and NH. The interesting part was noticing the patriotic “American Crayons” that were made in MEXICO! Something is simply wrong about this.

Our front door has sprouted a pair of “Mystery Shoes” that we have no clue where they came from. Our front porch is not well trafficked. We don’t have sidewalks in front of the house. The house is set off the road enough that strangers don’t generally wander in. So where did these black shoes come from? They aren’t ours and we would like to know who they belong to. Just a little strange to have someone’s shoes neatly placed outside your front door!

When will I learn? If you try to cross the middle section of Campus at the wrong time of day, plan to be there awhile. Honestly traffic here isn’t nearly as bad as some places. But when you are accustomed to traveling around without a bottleneck its painful when one occurs. One must become aware of the standard start and end times for classes because it is impossible to see walking or car traffic when looking toward campus from the East or West. It may look perfectly fine until you are at the point of no return. The cars back up quickly because of students crossing the roads, non-stop in mass. Has anyone noticed that students these days could care less about cars on the road and simply feel empowered to not even look when they cross into the traffic?

The other day I noticed a bicyclist (it was after sunset and fairly dark outside) out of the left corner of my eye. It was on the opposite side of the street and would have been in my blind spot had I not noticed. He is lucky he didn’t have a close encounter with a Ford Windstar that evening. He didn’t even budge his head to look to his right for traffic but barreled right across the road full speed ahead. He didn’t even stay in the cross walk but continued at even a greater angle prolonging his ride along the road as if no one else were around. Hulllooo McFly!

What do you get with a curious 5 year old, a full bottle of air freshener and bathroom that I guess must have not smelled too good? An empty bottle of air freshener and bathroom walls and floor covered with a very potent smell of “winds & springtime”.

It’s really not springtime around here but fall. Yes the leaves are beautiful. Many are falling from the trees creating the need to rake. I’m hoping for a good breeze this week to blow them out of the yard. I should have posted a daily “favorite tree”. I guess I still could but I missed having the camera with me for my favorite tree this past week. OH well, just know that the colors are vibrant and beautiful. I never want it to end. However, if it were this way year round it wouldn’t be nearly as thrilling to seek out the best colors before the disappear.

School, School, School, School, School and Songs (FREE CD opportunity)

I know I am long winded. It’s just who I am – a detail girl. So if you want to get straight to the Free CD information skip to the last couple of paragraphs.

Today turned out nothing like I thought it would. But then when do our days turn out exactly how we think they will? I made 5 trips to the school today. Trip 1: I took the kids to school and ended up staying to help with a 3^rd and 4^th grade breakfast. The principal (who was new to the school last year) started a new tradition which the kids think is great. He makes sure they have a special BIG breakfast the day before MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) testing begins. PTO takes care of the expenses and parents volunteer time. Actually the principal deserves the real badge of thanks. He did all the shopping and I don’t know if he did it or his wife helped but he brought a HUGE roaster pan full of more than 500 sausage links ready to serve along with pancakes that were being made on little griddles by parents, in every corner of the lunch room. There was plenty for them to have as much as they wanted. Some of those kids really downed a LOT of food. It was so fun to see the kids excited and listen intently to the little pep talk from the principal about doing their best, getting good sleep etc. One of the teachers (who also has two kids at the school) asked that the extra pancakes be packaged up so they could send it home with kids who might not have breakfast tomorrow. COOL. Trip 2: I ran home to get plastic baggies to package them.

I also learned that it was Dan’s day to raise the flag. I picked up the camera while getting the baggies and hoped to make it back in time without missing it. Then I learned that it would be awhile because they had PE, Computer lab and Accelerated Reading. So after peaking in on Sam’s class without being seen, catching his afternoon teacher in the hall and learning of some challenges they were having I ran home, made a Dr appointment for Sam and managed to get a few things done before running back for flag raising time. Trip 3: I made it back in plenty of time and with all the activities of Dan’s morning it was probably the latest flag raising (it was about 10:45am). Trip 4: I ended up getting Sam a Dr appointment to see if we can get his snotty nose under control. Sure enough he had a sinus infection and inflamed ears. Yeah, now he has meds to make it all better. Trip 5: I had hoped to return Sam for a portion of the afternoon but it took so long at the Dr that we made it in time for school to get out, pick up Dan and instead of leaving and having them ride the bus I shuffled them off to one of the classrooms where they had some college volunteers to supervise the children while parents attended the PTO meeting. It was also Dairy Queen night for the school (the teachers and principal will work the counter, make ice cream etc and the school gets a portion of the sales). We didn’t attend last year and Dan so wanted to see his teacher serving up the ice cream. The line was SO long that we got to see her but he settled on the principal serving up his ice cream. By chance we ended up following the principal on his Harley Davidson to DQ. I think the boys were both more excited about that than anything else.

So I have covered the SCHOOL 5 times and now for SONGS. While Sam was in the car on the way to the Dr he started singing a Christmas song he enjoys from a CD we have. It wasn’t long before he asked to listen to the “Jingle songs”. Now we do not have snow here yet and it’s still beautiful fall!! But my family in Utah received a significant snowfall over the weekend. By Sunday morning my mom said she had 7”. So in honor of their early arrival of Winter and Sam’s need to hear the Jingle music we turned on the Christmas CD that stays in our car! It is the favorite Christmas CD for the kids and that is where we listen most to CD’s together. It is called Jingles and was released in 1998 by an a cappella group called Voice Male. Sam loves the sounds and rhythms and gets a HUGE smile when he hears the beginning to Jingle Bell Rock. We are also entertained with some of the things the boys think are the lyrics. Last year an ongoing joke began about Angels We Have Heard on High. They thought that the chorus was “we make Chelsea stay home” instead of “in excelsis Deo”. The song will never be sung right now by our family.

Now some of you might have heard of Voice Male and some might not. If not, you are really missing out. So here is some information about the group and best of all, a new CD that they just released!!!!! It is called Kid Stuff and has 15 fun songs on it including the last few being sleepy time songs. I know you are going to want it so listen up as you could get the CD for free (keep reading). You can check out the group’s very well designed website at www.voicemalemusic.com where you can listen to short clips of the songs. But FIRST you should also go check out the following BLOG (click on this link). Three CD’s will be given away in a drawing for anyone who leaves a comment in their blog.

OK I must admit that I do happen to have a connection to this group as a good friend of ours married one of the singers. We love them and wish we didn’t live on the North and South ends of the US. So for now we settle on reading their fun blog to keep in touch. I hope you all enter a comment on their blog!

The Latter-Day Frontier [/\/ick]

This is an addendum to Sarah's post about our weekend water woes.

I've never been much of a camper. As a youngster, I was sent to summer camp every summer. (It was a special camp for poor kids.) Each summer, we camped out in the woods for a night. One year I woke up in the middle of the night, got disoriented, and peed on some kid's pillow (mistaking it for the 'bathroom' tree),

As a young adult in New Hampshire, I went on a bike trip with the scouts. Well, I drove the support vehicle on their week-long bike trip. During the first night, it rained. In the night, some scouts tripped over my tent lines in the rain and I woke up soaked. I have not enjoyed the wilderness life.

In spite of this, my Grandmother, on more than one occasion, told me I looked like "Man Mountain Dean", aka "Mountain Man Dean". I thought she was just in her dotage and was making stuff up. Turns out he was a real person, a professional wrestler. That's him up at the top of this post. Tell me what you think- do I look like him?

I would not have survived living on the frontier, either. Living the past few days without running water has made me appreciate that. I still had electricity, and heating (it's been getting into the 30's at night here in mid-Michigan), and satellite TV (for General Conference (ok, for MythBusters)), cable internet, indoor sanitation (yeah, toilets) etc. We still had plenty of "mod cons", but I gained new appreciation for living on the edge and having to haul your water.

Think about what you have to do first thing in the morning. Now think about having to first go out of the house to haul a 5-gallong bucket of water in before you could do what you have to do first thing in the morning. Don't forget that you can only wash your hands in the kitchen sink because that's where the 7-gallon emergency-water container is (it won't fit on the bathroom counter).

Think not just of washing the dishes by hand, but of having to heat the water on the stove before you wash them. Think of the fact that you don't have enough burners to heat enough pans of water to fill your sink in one go. Then think of the fact that you have so many dirty dishes you can't do them in one sinkful of hot water, so you have to heat like 15 gallons of water in shifts. The whole time you're doing one sinkful of dishes, you're heating water for the next sinkful, because the water you're using now is already disgusting, but you don't have any new hot water for it yet, so oh well, keep washing. Dont' forget the cold water to rinse in, which is another 10 gallons or so. Yeah, it should probably be hot water I guess, but I don't have enough room to heat the wash water, much less the rinse water.

What about brushing your teeth? Do you use a) the unfiltered, unsoftened water from the hose, b) the water you've stored for six months but forgot to add a couple of drops of bleach to, so who knows what is growing in it, or c) the expensive bottled water? I chose some of (b) and some of (c). I chose (c) for the kids, though.

Oh, and don't forget to tell your kids not to drink (b) because you're not sure if its safe. Dan says it tasted fine, but then he vomited twice Sunday night and didn't go to school Monday, so who knows.

Finally, forget bathing/showering! You think I'm gonna haul that much water in and heat it? Oh no I'm not. So when things start to get a little itchy in places you shouldn't touch in front of company, just grab the wet-wipes and have a sponge bath. (Do NOT forget to warm them up first!) When your hair starts to feel like a greasy mop, grab the shampoo and the hose and go outside for a quick (and cold) hair-wash. Luckily, we have friends (two sets of friends, actually) who offered the use of their facilities, so we all got showered on Sunday and I didn't have to do the half-naked-outside-with-the-hose-hair-wash-dance.

To the vast numbers of humans who did without running water, electricity, and all the things that go with it: I salute you.

I need some water.

This is a test of the 72 hour water supply, this is only a test

When we bought our house almost 2 years ago the first thing we noticed was the water. It was so hard and it smelled awful! You never felt clean after a shower. Considering this was a new house it was really ugly to peer into the shiny new white toilet only to see rusty orange (which has since been cleaned out and it is shiny white). We had never lived anywhere with well water but most homes we looked at had them and they all had something in common. A top priority quickly surfaced – a water softener and carbon filter. The other homes had been around awhile so those owners had obviously learned this lesson that we were just learning. Our basement is one large expanse of completely unfinished space. In one corner sits our wellmate small holding tank and this is where our water softener was also installed. The carbon filter is attached to the ceiling and encased with a thick plastic blue housing. It hangs down almost 2 feet. So Friday night Nick went downstairs to find a cable and noticed water on the floor which was coming from the carbon filter. He found the o-ring was not working properly. In the process of holding onto the heavy thick plastic housing, half full of water, while trying to fix the o-ring at the top, it slipped out of his hands and fell to the cement floor. Now one might think that considering how heavy and thick this plastic thing is it would hold up to such a fall. Nope! It had at least a 7” vertical crack that was almost impossible to see until you connected the housing back up and let the water pressure flow through, quickly showing you right where that crack was.

We do not have a shut off valve to bypass the water filter. So, this meant we needed to keep the water turned off or we would have a mess downstairs! It was Friday night around 8pm and therefore too late to call businesses to see if we could get a replacement. Online the part was available but it wouldn’t have been processed until Monday and even then overnight shipping for a Tuesday delivery would have cost an extra $100+. Saturday we found that there were no businesses open. So we accepted our little test and decided to live without water until Monday when we hoped to be able to get this fixed.

To make it more interesting I was trying to prepare for a Tastefully Simple event I needed to be to very early Saturday morning and also trying to get a head start on soup preparation for our monthly Soup Saturday project for Dan. I learned just how often I rinse my hands while cooking! Fortunately we have a supply of backup water. Probably not enough for a REAL emergency but it was a great test of a 72 hour crisis situation. We put a large 7 gallon tank of water that had a spigot on the kitchen counter next to the kitchen sink. When tipped on its side we could easily wash our hands with it. We had bottled gallons of water that we could use for drinking and things like making soup and brushing teeth. Because the outside water does not pass through the filter we could fill up buckets of water to keep next to the toilet so we could flush occasionally as needed. Nick even took some of the outside water and boiled it to do dishes the old fashioned way. I must admit that when I helped to finish a few I enjoyed the extra warmth of the water. Or maybe I was just missing not having the instant access to hot water. All in all it was a bit of an inconvenience but a really good test for a real emergency. We do in fact have running water now! So I guess it was less than 72 hours. Our local Culligan office, who installed the filter originally, had a housing they sold us for about the price online (minus the hefty shipping charges). I’m sure they would have charged us more but they had one that had been in a truck and was dinged up a bit but had never been used. I can live with a less than smooth housing unit. The good part – no cracks! We are back in business. Now the laundry can begin again. I think I will start with a fresh cup of ice water. I think we have some ice left. . .